By: Emma Bates
Once upon a time, there was an executive at Penta, a big Chilean insurance and credit agency, who wanted a raise. When he didn’t get it, he threatened to tell the Chilean news media about some corruption he knew about in the company, but the threat didn’t work, and he followed through with it: he went to the news. What was this corruption?
Penta gave money to politicians of the Right wing, financing campaigns and using false “consulting” invoices to make it look like the money was a payment, not a donation. The political Left felt quite satisfied with this revelation –those corrupt Derechistas were finally exposed as the frauds they really were!
Not so fast. The inquiry continued and led to the discovery that Soquimich (the fiercely Right-wing company Augusto Pinochet created out of the previously national chemical and mining enterprises) was also donating –to politicians of both parties.
Michelle Bachelet had campaigned on a promise to end corruption in Chilean politics, but the man in her cabinet whose job it was to pursue and adjudicate these cases, Rodrigo Peñelio, was himself involved in the corruption. In fact, almost everyone was. So, she’s reshuffled her cabinet and brought in new blood.
One might think some congressional resignations were in order. Not so, because of a law persists from the Pinochet era that stipulates that elected congresspeople may not resign. Even if they are found guilty of corruption. They may be asked to, it may be just, but they get to wait until their time comes around to be elected again –by which time many will have forgotten it ever happened.
Meanwhile, Michelle Bachelet’s son has a wife who is the owner of a company called Caval. Caval borrowed quite a bit of money to buy some land at cheap prices just before Bachelet came into power. Right after her inauguration, the status of the land parcels changed to allow development –netting Caval a huge profit.
Bachelet had no comment until pretty late in the game, months later in fact, at which she stated that everyone is equal under the law. Journalists suspect that she didn’t know about the schemes, but she hasn’t said much about it, and since the interior minister has resigned in disgrace, being involved in the scandal, the case hasn’t been handled very well.
The silver lining to all of this “garbage” as one of my private students described it, is that the cases have been made public. People are angry about it. And in Chile, there is a good chance that justice will prevail in this case, at least more of a chance than elsewhere in South America. It isn’t normal here, and that’s something to celebrate.
STEP News 